Electrify cross-country route to ease lorry pressures on A14

Any analysis of the A14 corridor must recognise the importance of transferring as much long-distance freight to the parallel rail route as possible as a way to reduce road congestion, accidents and pollution. Freight makes up to 40% of the traffic on some parts of the route (‘Road tolls reduce benefits of A14 improvements across Cambridgeshire’ and Viewpoint LTT 611).

That is why it is so welcome that the Government has committed to the capacity upgrades during the period 2014-2019 along this route, which will allow 50 daily trains to operate in and out of Felixstowe (with rail’s market share increasing from around 25% to around 40%) resulting in the removal of 40 million long-distance lorry miles from the A14 corridor per annum.

The next step to improve congestion on the A14 corridor is rail electrification, which would bring added economic, environmental and social benefits through even lower emissions, extra capacity from longer trains and better utilisation of train paths, because of faster acceleration of electric locomotives.

Discuss this topic at LTT's UK Rail & Freight Conference